s
eye."

"Eustachio," said Leonardo, with admiration, "it is the misery of Mantua
that she hath no citizen who can act half as well as thou canst talk. I
would fain have further discourse with thee."

The two statesmen laid their heads together, and ere long the mob were
crying, "A Virgil! a Virgil!"

The councillors reassembled and passed resolutions.

"But who shall be Regent?" inquired some one when Virgil had been elected
unanimously.

"Who but we?" asked Eustachio and Leonardo. "Are we not the heads of the
Virgilian party?"

Thus had the enthusiastic Manto, purest of idealists, installed in
authority the two most unprincipled politicians in the republic; and she
had lost her lover besides, for Benedetto fled the city, vowing vengeance.

Anyhow, the dead poet was enthroned Duke of Mantua; Eustachio and Leonardo
became Regents, with the style of Consuls, and it was provided that in
doubtful cases reference should be made to the Sortes Virgilianae. And
truly, if we may believe the chronicles, the arrangement worked for a time
surprisingly well. The Mantuans, in an irrational way, had done what it
behoves all communities to do rationally if they can. They had sought for a
good and worthy citizen to rule them; it was their misfortune that such an
one could only be found among the dead. They felt prouder of themselves for
being governed by a great man--one in comparison with whom kings and
pontiffs were the creatures of a day. They would not, if they could help
it, disgrace themselves by disgracing their hero; they would not have it
said that Mantua, which had not been too weak to bear him, had been too
weak to endure his government. The very hucksters and usurers among them
felt dimly that there was such a thing as an Ideal. A glimmering perception
dawned upon mailed, steel-fisted barons that there was such a thing as an
Idea, and they felt uneasily apprehensive, like beasts of prey who have for
the first time sniffed gunpowder. The railleries and mockeries of Mantua's
neighbours, moreover, stimulated Mantua's citizens to persevere in their
course, and deterred them from doing aught to approve themselves fools.
Were not Verona, Cremona, Lodi, Pavia, Crema, cities that could never
enthrone the Virgil they had never produced, watching with undissembled
expectation to see them trip? The hollow-hearted Eustachio and the
rapacious Leonardo, their virtual rulers, might indeed be little sensible
to this enthusiasm, b